Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Fuller Brush salesman had the unfortunate task of trying to sell his wares to the women of Freesia Court during the fifth day of a March cold snap.

"They were like caged animals," he complained later to his district manager. "I felt like any minute they were going to turn on me."

"Brushes " Faith Owens had said when he offered up his bright smile and sales pitch on her icy front doorstep. "I'm sorry, but I've got a little more than brushes to worry about right now. Like wondering if spring is ever going to get here. Because I truly believed it might really be coming when boom--here it is, twenty below zero with a wind-chill factor that would bring Nanook of the North to his knees."

"Thank you for your time," said the salesman, picking up his case. "You have a pleasant day, now."

"And what exactly is a wind-chill factor anyway "

"Faith," called her husband, Wade, from the living room. "Faith, don't be rude, honey."

"Well what is it " she asked, slamming the door with her hip. "What exactly is a wind-chill factor "

"This is Minnesota," said Wade, ignoring her question because he wasn't quite sure of the answer. "What do you expect "

"Oh, I don't know--maybe a little damn relief "

"Might I remind you," said Wade, "how you cried with delight seeing your first snowfall "

"I cried with delight the first time I had sex with you, but that doesn't mean I want it nonstop."

"You're telling me," said Wade with a wistful sigh.

"Ha, ha, ha," said Faith, surveying her neat and trim husband as he brushed his crew cut with his palm, a gesture he always made after what he thought was a joke.

It was no surprise to Faith that her husband had less trouble adapting to the frozen north. Hell, he was flying out of it all the time. Right before Christmas, Wade had been transferred to Minneapolis from Dallas, although to Faith, it may as well have been Siberia.

That very morning he was leaving for a three-day trip with a layover in warm and sunny Los Angeles, and as she stomped upstairs to finish his packing, anger seethed through Faith like steam through their loud and clanking radiators--Los Angeles! In just a few hours Wade could feasibly be lying poolside as some flirtatious Nordic stewardess (why did every Minnesota stewardess she'd seen have to look like Miss Sweden ) rubbed suntan lotion on his shoulders, while she, Faith, rubbed ointment onto the chapped little bottom of their son, Beau.

She pitched a rolled-up ball of socks into Wade's suitcase with the velocity of a teenage show-off trying to knock down a pyramid of bottles at a carnival booth. There had been a time when she actually enjoyed packing for her husband--when she'd fold his shirts into neat rectangles, slipping a sheet of tissue paper between them so they wouldn't wrinkle; when she'd tuck a love note inside a pair of boxer shorts or dab her perfume on the neckline of an undershirt--but routine had long ago tarnished that thrill.